The draft Reversal of the Supreme Court’s position Roe v. Wade that leaked monday night is not the end yet. But as the dust settles, American women may conclude that they have lost their right to abortion in the same way that one Ernest Hemingway character said he went bankrupt: gradually, then suddenly.
If anything like the leaked draft becomes law, it will not only be the result of decades of lobbying, litigation and the nomination of conservative judges by anti-abortion groups and their allies. Their Republican Party, but also a single decision to reverse the establishment of constitutional rights has inspired abortion rights campaigners around the world.
So the opinion also raises a question concerning activists everywhere: Is it right to seek protection for abortion rights through the courts, rather than build a mass movement? could yield a legislative victory, a riskier strategy than before?
Roe’s surprising politics
It’s hard to imagine now, but by the time Roe v. Wade was decided, in 1973, abortion wasn’t a big deal for American rights, or even for Protestants .
In fact, two years before Roe, the Southern Baptist Convention vote for a solution Call for legalization of abortion. And although both parties are divided on the issue, opposition to abortion is most relevant to Catholics, who tend to vote Democrats.
But just a few years later, that changed. This change is not driven by abortion itself but by discrimination. After the Supreme Court ordered schools in the South to be segregated, many white parents pulled their children away from public schools and sent them to all-white private schools called Distinguished Academy. After further litigation by black parents, the IRS revoked those schools’ tax-exempt status, sparking widespread anger among white evangelical Christians and spurring their new role. as a powerful conservative force in American politics.
Coming out against discrimination is not really socially acceptable or unpalatable to a broader coalition. But opposing abortion is. And abortion rights follow a similar procedural path as Brown v. Board of Education and other civil rights lawsuits, using impact litigation to win constitutional protection in the Supreme Court. high to replace state law. Thus, criticizing Roe has become a way of talking about “overreach of government”, “rights of nations” and the need to “protect the family” without actively protesting. civil rights or discrimination.
Over the years, the backlash has built up more steam. But the right to abortion seems to have remained relatively secure, especially after the Supreme Court reconfirmed it in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992. The fact is that abortion rights are still protected in the United States, even in the face of growing political opposition, it seems to be the argument in favor of seeking protection through the courts.
Activists in other countries have sought a similar path. In Colombia in 2006, Monica Roa, lawyer for the feminist group Worldwide female link, won an exception to the country’s blanket abortion ban by arguing that Colombia’s international treaty organizations and thus its Constitution, require exceptions for for rape, incest, or danger to the life or health of the mother. This year, in a next casethe court went further, declaring all abortions before 24 weeks of gestation.
Julie Zulver, a political anthropologist who has researched activism around reproductive rights in Colombia, says pursuing the issue through the courts allows activists to somewhat circumvent the status quo. political controversy surrounding this issue. “During the peace process, things became polarized,” she said.
In 2016, the government held a referendum on a peace agreement with the guerrilla group FARC. To undermine public support for the deal, conservative politicians, including former President Álvaro Uribe, have sought to link the draft agreement to abortion, sex education in schools. academic and other controversial social issues.
“As soon as the peace referendum started to go through, it was like, if you vote yes to this peace referendum, you are voting to make your children gay, you are voting. against the nation. You are voting against the idea of nation and family. And that includes issues like women’s rights or access to reproductive rights,” said Dr. Zulver.
In Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has ignited fire in his opposition to the Mexican feminist movement, which he sees as a hostile opposition to his populist government. But after many years of organizing the grassroots movement, The country’s supreme court has abolished abortion in 2021.
The court is the focal point
But just as Roe’s departure and resistance to opposition seemed to chart a path to abortion protection, its demise may now highlight a potential weakness of the protection. Judicial: It inherently depends on the makeup of the court. And over time, that could change.
In the United States, Republican voters’ opposition to abortion has helped fuel a decades-long effort to appoint and elect conservative judges at all levels of the justice system. Today, the result is a conservative majority in the Supreme Court that not only looks to oust Roe, but leans sharply to the right on other issues, including voting rights.
In Poland, when the far-right nationalist government failed to pass restrictive legislation on abortion through Parliament, it turned instead to the constitutional court, which has judges friendly with Law and Justice party. In October 2020, the court entered into force unsuccessful legal defense into constitutional law.
Sometimes litigation is simply trouble. In 2010, many thought that a challenge to Irish abortion restrictions at the European Court of Human Rights could become a blow to Europe. But the court instead issue only a narrow procedural decision.
Positiveism after all
Ultimately, it can come down to activism. And around the world, a pattern has emerged: successful campaigns see abortion as part of broader questions of national identity, and the rest as a persistent organization of activists. experienced operation.
In Ireland in 2012, death of a young woman named Savita Halappanavar who was denied a medically necessary abortion became a rallying call for the abortion rights movement. In 2018, the country held a referendum to change the Constitution to legalize abortion, which was passed with more than 66% support.
As in Colombia, Irish activists have sought to treat abortion as a matter of social and national identity. But this time, the momentum has been reversed: In Ireland, the most successful identity argument has been made by the party that argued in support on abortion rights, seeing reproductive rights as part of Ireland’s European identity.
Marie Berry, a political scientist at the University of Denver who has studied the Irish campaign, said: “The landscape surrounding Ireland’s abortion rights campaign is about benevolent and Ireland must become what it is. Europe’s benevolent face. “That is more pitiful than the UK, as the UK has become more and more conservative, especially under the Tory government. That we are in the EU, we represent a progressive Europe”.
But the key to the movement’s success may be combining that compelling message with the organizing experience of more radical feminist groups. “What shocked me when I did the research with the activists there was the fact that the crux of the whole abortion rights ‘8th Campaign to Abolish’ came from the anarchist movements- feminism, rooted in environmental movements rather than women’s freedom movements. ,” said Dr. Berry. “Of course, the majority of those who voted for it were not associated with more leftist organisations. But that was really the heart of the movement that did it.”
In Argentina, the Ni Una Menos (“Not one less woman”) movement also combined enduring, enduring organization with the shaping of abortion rights within the broader context of a just society, leading to The lack of access to safe, legal abortion is only part of a broader problem of violence against women. A 2018 bill to legalize the procedure failed, but in 2020 the country legalized abortion, causing Argentina the largest country in Latin America to do so.
In the United States, by contrast, legal abortion has been the status quo since Roe’s decision in 1973, making it a difficult target for that kind of sustainable mass organization.
“I think the indigenous movement, some more progressive kind of racial justice activism, Occupy, all sorts of leftist buttons in those movements, didn’t focus abortion on advocacy. their because it was more or less what Berry said. And for other organizations that focus on the intersection of reproductive rights with race and class, “abortion has always been there, but it’s not the only need,” she said.
By contrast, centrist organizations and Democratic politicians often view abortion as an unfortunate but necessary issue for healthcare services that need to be “safe, legal, and rare” and focus on focus on accessibility issues. That’s often important for women in rural areas or states where heavy regulations have made abortion essentially impractical, but it doesn’t make for a kind of universal appeal. them, based on identity have worked in countries like Ireland.
And so today, with Roe on the decline, American activists are considering what it will take to build their own mass movement in the style of Ni Una Menos — and what they can do. achieve before it’s too late.
